Education and Globalization in Southeast Asia Issues and Challenges

74 Pad Lavankura and Rattana Lao

on a short-term basis. There is only one full-time Thai lecturer. Most of the
lecturers teach one or two courses at the college on a part-time basis, and
the quality and commitment of the lecturers fluctuate. This has enormous
repercussion in terms of the quality of education as this way of hiring
teachers creates deficiencies in the quality of teaching. The problem of
part-time teachers in international programmes arises from two factors.
On the one hand, international programmes are such that they would not
attract full-time lecturers who would commit to teach and research. On
the other hand, there is a high demand among Thai lecturers who need
to earn extra income through extra teaching. Given such a scenario, it is
questionable how one can control the quality of international education
in Thailand.
Also, in Thailand the international programmes are largely Western
oriented, which essentially followed the long-established value and reliance
of Thai education on Western education since the early modernization
period (Dhiravegin 1978, p. 120; Osatharom 1990, p. 252; Sivaraksa 1991,
p. 51). However, to hire lecturers from the preferred developed countries
is costly. This leads to universities choosing not to hire foreign lecturers on
a full-time basis. For example, for an undergraduate course the university
has to spend about 81,600 baht (1,700 baht × 6 hours × 8 days) per lecturer
per one course, plus other supplementary costs such as accommodation
(20,000 baht for more than 22 days stay), air ticket, and in-country travel
expenses. Because of the policy of hiring mostly part-time foreign lecturers,
programmes are organized around a system of “block courses” where every
subject is allocated a strict timetable. Instead of learning seven different
subjects per semester as in a normal university programme, students in
international programme take two subjects per month; each subject is taught

TABLE 3.2

Number of Foreign and Thai Lecturers in Business Administration

Number of Thai lecturers Number of foreign lecturers Total

6 31 37

(5 are adjunct or invited from other

faculties, universities; 1 full-time

lecturer hired by the college)

(5 are adjunct lecturers and 26 are

invited lecturers from Europe (10),

USA (8), other Thai universities (3),

China (1), and others (4)

Source: Statistics from an international college, semester 1, 2014 academic year.